


Not-Fic Amnesty: Watchmen Kid-Fic

by JupiterMelichios



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Families of Choice, Kid Fic, Multi, Not-Fic Amnesty, Notfic, Polyamory, Short One Shot, Tachyons don't work like that, de-aged character, handwavey science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterMelichios/pseuds/JupiterMelichios
Summary: When Dan goes to investigate a weird noise coming from the basement, the last thing he's expecting to find is a kid. Especially not a scrawny ginger kid who looks strangely familiar...Not-Fic version of an unfinished story idea





	Not-Fic Amnesty: Watchmen Kid-Fic

**Author's Note:**

> I've declared a not-fic amnesty, where I turn all the WIPs I'm never going to finish into not-fic.
> 
> If anyone wants to use this as a plot outline for an actual fic, feel free. Just remember to credit (and link, so I can see what you create!)

About 3 years post the Keen Act, and the Roche case, and everything going so wrong, Dan’s at home one evening by himself (as usual) when he hears a noise from the basement.

He goes to investigate, expecting rats, or raccoons, or a pigeon. Instead he finds a kid, scrawny and ginger and ugly as sin, wearing a man’s dress shirt that reaches nearly to his knees and nothing else.

Dan has no idea what the hell’s happening, but the kid is clearly cold and scared and hungry, and he’s not a monster, so obviously he takes the kid up and feeds him, and tries to get him talking. The kids not chatty, but he warms up a bit when Dan doesn’t stopping him having 8 sugars in his coffee, and the more he says, the more the suspicion grows in Dan’s mind.

He puts the kid to bed in his spare room, and calls Jon who confirms what Dan’s been fearing. The kid sleeping upstairs is Rorschach, somehow de-aged to 9 or 10.

Dan has no idea what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He knows what Rorschach would want him to do, but Rorschach is an asshole and sometimes an idiot, and Dan’s not going to abandon the kid to fend for himself just because Rorschach doesn’t trust Dan to know his secret identity.

Jon comes to examine the kid, and try and figure out what’s happened, and of course when she hears what’s happened Laurie insists on tagging along, because this is way too good to miss. Except that it turns out Rorschach as a kid isn’t prime teasing material, it’s just fucking tragic. He’s so small, and so scared, and so desperate to find anyone he can trust that he’s imprinted on Dan like a baby bird, and he’s awkwardly polite to her and so worried when Jon’s teleportation makes her barf like it always does, and godamnit it she hates Rorschach but it takes all of five minutes for her to decide she would die to protect baby Walter.

Jon can’t figure out what’s happened to Rorschach, something is blocking his future vision, and that’s unusual enough that he actually engages with the problem, promises to investigate. He suggests that Dan speak to Adrian as well, but Dan’s wary to when Rorschach always disliked Adrian so much. (He would never admit that it’s also because Adrian has a tendency to take over any situation, and he’s guiltily enjoying being the one in control for a change.)

Laurie agrees to go shopping for clothes for Walter, since he won’t let Dan out of his sight, and Dan’s wary of taking him outside when he might suddenly revert at any minute, and she tries to pretend that she’s just helping because of how pissed Rorschach will be when he comes back and realises what happened, but really she’s just gone all in on being Walter’s cool vodka-aunt.

After a week of not much happening, they realise that this might be a long-term thing, and people are going to notice that Rorschach hasn’t been out on the streets. They debate just leaving it, but even though they’re both retired and legal now, it feels disrespectful to retire Rorschach even temporarily.

Dan would never pass as Rorschach in a million years, but with a binder and a little strategic planning Laurie is surprisingly convincing, and Dan is very confused by how ridiculously hot he finds that fact.  
They fall into this domestic routine, Dan home-schooling Walter in the day, then Laurie giving him boxing lessons and having dinner with them before she goes on patrol, and Dan isn’t surprised in the least at how damn happy he is, even though he’s desperate to be out on the street with her, but it comes as a shock to Laurie. She hadn’t even realised she was miserable, but suddenly everything is so much better that it’s been for years. She’s missed being out on the street, but more than that she’s missed having people who actually pay attention to her. Jon cares about her, but it’s all so distant and abstract, but Walter thinks she’s the coolest person in the world because she showed him how to throw a proper punch, and Dan is a perfect gentleman but she’s not an idiot and she can see he’s falling in love with her, and she almost hates how good it all feels.

Eventually Jon admits he’s not getting anywhere, and Dan has to suck it up and go talk to Adrian. Naturally Adrian thinks it’s all hilarious, but promises to look into it.

He’s Adrian, and he’s a dick, so he doesn’t update them, or tell them what he’s doing. They say goodbye to Laurie and go to bed one night, and the next day Dan wakes up to find the spare room empty, and a note in familiar handwriting that just says “don’t look for me”.

When Adrian phones later to say that it was an accident resulting from an experiment he was running involving tachyons. Rorschach must have been close to one of his research labs during one of the test runs, and somehow been exposed.

Dan’s too fucked up to be suspicious. When Laurie turns up the night after Rorschach’s disappearance, he just fucking collapses, sobbing his heart out. She does her best to comfort him, but there’s not much she can say, and when in a moment of emotional weakness he kisses her, she stops coming visiting him, too guilty over how much she wanted him too to see him again.

He spends weeks drifting, feeling like a ghost in his own home. It’s not even the loss of his almost-kid. He’d never really forgotten who Walter was, had never let his feeling get more paternal that strictly necessary, as opposed to feeling like an older brother. What’s fucking him up is realising how pitifully lonely his life is. How he has no friends who aren’t superheroes, and now even they aren’t talking to him anymore.

He doesn’t let himself hope when he hears noises from the basement, he honestly feels like he’s beyond hope that this stage, but he still nearly fucking breaks down crying when he finds Rorschach waiting for him. Not Walter – real grown up Rorschach. His Rorschach.

Turns out he’s been investigating Adrian, trying to figure out what the fuck really happened because he didn’t believe for one second that his de-aging was really an accident. And he’s got proof.

Dan pretty much started suiting up as soon as he saw him, because he’s spent 3 years benched while people he cared about fought crime with no protection and no back up and he is done, okay, he is totally fucking done with that. But he nearly gives himself a concussion that would have benched him for another month when Rorschach casually mentions that they need to go get Laurie first.

Jon doesn’t seem surprised to see them – Walter is the only thing that’s managed to surprised him for decades – but does seem real sad. Laurie takes one look at Rorschach and goes running for her costume, because in some ways she’s been even worse of than Dan. She’s had a taste of it again, a chance to do what she was trained from birth to do, and then had to give it all up to go back to playing house with a man who barely speaks to her.

She tells Jon she’ll be back later, and he just says “no you won’t” and goes back to his work, and she doesn’t press it.

In Archie, Rorschach tells them what he’s figured out – that Adrian is behind a series of death of retired superheroes and villains. That he’s been building a secret base in the arctic. That he’s been doing experiments in ways to block Jon’s vision. That he knew Rorschach’s identity.

Put like that, it’s pretty clear what’s going on, if not the reasons for it, but Dan doesn’t want to believe it. Yes Adrian’s weird, and intense, and thinks he’s smarter than everyone else just because he’s better at math, but there’s a big gap between that and full on supervillain. But Rorschach is sure. And Dan has been following this man’s hunches into certain death for a decade, and just because they’re all old enough now to know better isn’t going to stop him.

They go to confront Adrian in his penthouse. He’s ready for them of course, is sure he’s planned for every circumstance. But he never expected them to be a family. He understands comradeship, even friendship of a sort, but he’s never understood family. Laurie has spent weeks using all Rorschach’s signature moves, Walter spent weeks studying Laurie’s style, both of them know Dan inside out. They work together seamlessly, and for a moment it looks like it’s going to be enough. Adrian’s good, but they’re spectacular.

But Adrian really doesn’t plan for everything, and they’re in his property, in the middle of New York. The highest paid private security in the US are only a button push away, and there’s only so much even the best spandex can do again machine guns.

That’s when Jon shows up.

It only takes him vaporising a couple of guards to make the rest of them realise no paycheck is worth this. Adrian tries to play it innocent, but it doesn’t matter. Rorschach’s return hadn’t been part of Adrian’s plan, for all that he’d been happy to take credit. He’d assumed the affects would be permanent, or at least long term enough to keep everyone distracted.

When Rorschach came to Manhattan’s labs to get Laurie, Jon had been able to trace the tachyon field around him, unravel it, undo it’s affects on his abilities. He can once again see all the branching realities, and he knows what Adrian is planning. How he was experimenting with ways to block Jon’s vision, to cover up his plans for the world. Mass death, destruction on a terrible scale, as a way of preventing nuclear war.

He tries to convince Jon that it’s the only way, but this Jon hasn’t been driven to the drink by a campaign of psychological warfare. He atomises Adrian, and then for good measure, he atomises every single nuclear weapon in the world.

Even with the horror of what Adrian was planning, and seeing their old friend killed, there’s still the elation of having won. Having saved the day. This time when Dan kisses Laurie she doesn’t stop him, and before Rorschach can edge away from the display of affection, she grabs him and kisses him too, right on the mask.

They all go still, waiting for the violence, but to their surprise it doesn’t come. The mask patterns move very fast, like maybe he’s blushing, but he doesn’t do anything more than adjust his hat and move a little closer to Dan. And when Dan takes his hand, he doesn’t pull away.

Jon is by the window, looking out at the city he just saved. Laurie comes over the join him. She hadn’t know she was making a choice, but she can feel the finality of it now, and she doesn’t regret what she did. They’re better together, the three of them, they’re a family. She and Jon were never a family, just two lost souls clinging to one another because the familiar is less frightening than change.  
“I’m leaving,” he says eventually.

“I know. I’m not coming with you.”

“I know that too. I’m glad you have them, Laurel. They are good for you.”

“Yeah. I think they are.”

They keep watching for a while after he’s gone, but he doesn’t come back, so all that’s left is figuring out to get back out without being seen, and figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives together.


End file.
